Changing Turkey in a Changing World

The Round table on EU Foreign Policy: The View from the Mediterranean

Over the course of the 2011-12 academic year, the European Foreign Policy Unit at the LSE is hosting a series of ten roundtables on ‘EU Foreign Policy after Lisbon’. The series is funded by the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme, and will explore a number of different issues with respect to EU foreign policy, including the impact of the Lisbon Treaty on particular policy areas, the role of parliaments and NGOs in policy-making, and the views of outsiders of the post-Lisbon EU.

Speakers

Professor Atila Eralp (Middle East Technical University, Ankara)

Professor Richard Gillespie (University of Liverpool)

Dr Sharon Pardo (Ben Gurion University)

Date: Thursday, 19 January 2012

Time: 18.30 to 20.00

Venue: New Academic Building, room NAB 2.04

For maps and directions see: http://www2.lse.ac.uk/mapsAndDirections/Home.aspx).

You are warmly invited to attend, and there is no need to register for the event. To enter the New Academic Building, you will need to tell the security personnel that you are attending this roundtable.

For further information on the roundtable series, see http://www2.lse.ac.uk/internationalRelations/centresandunits/EFPU/EUFPafterLisbon.aspx.

Border monuments are often designed to celebrate mobility and interconnectedness. According to the architect Cecil Balmond, “A border offers identity but one that is enriched by neighbours, so that it’s not so much a line of separation as a local set of interconnected values.”

We are seeking short essays (max. 1,500 words) on any European border monument.

Extended Closing date: 1 February 2012

Well-known examples of border monuments include: the Statue of Humanity in Kars,‘The Star of Caledonia’ monument (yet to be built) on the Scottish/English border at Gretna,The Welcome (‘Cradle of History’) Monument on Gibraltar, the Schengen monument to a “borderless Europe”, the ‘Bridge of Europe’ over the Rhine River between Strasbourg (France) & Kehl (Germany), and the museumization of the Berlin Wall (e.g. the Checkpoint Charlie museum).

Entries are invited on these or any other border monuments located in Europe. We are particularly interested in learning why those monuments were built in the first place and how they contribute to the connection between two separate communities.

Extended Closing date: 1 February 2012

Entries to be sent to: ChangingTurkey@gmail.com

The winner will receive “Cosmopolitan Spaces: Europe, Globalization, Theory”

Sakip Sabanci International Research Award

Submit your paper for the 2012 Awards, on the theme of Performance of the Turkish Economy during Global Crises.

Prizes
_$20,000 for the first prize,
_$10,000 for the second;
_$5,000 for the third.

Deadline: March 31st, 2012.

All entries must be new and original works, not published previously in any form.
Essays must be approximately 13.000 words, including title, citations, and endnotes. (References should be shown in the form of endnotes.)
An abstract of 500 words embedded to the original essay and a short c.v. of the applicant are required.
Entries must be submitted in English, in the form of an attached Word document to the following address:

http://award.sabanciuniv.edu/submityourentryform

WORKSHOP BY NETWORK TURKEY

“Turkish Studies in Germany II – Employment Opportunities and Perspectives”

Date: 2^nd and 3^rd March 2012

Place: Hamburg University, Asien-Afrika-Institut

Turkey is among the 20 biggest industrial nations and an important partner for Germany in many aspects. Yet scholarly research on contemporary Turkey is lacking in many respects.

Therefore the workshop “Turkish Studies in Germany II – Employment Opportunities and Perspectives” as well as the publication “Young Researchers` Annual Journal of Turkish Studies in Germany” both organized by TürkeiEuropaZentrum and Network Turkey aim at fostering cooperation and research among young researchers working on contemporary Turkey. The interdisciplinary workshop takes place every two years at Hamburg University. Conference language is German. The main focus of the workshop is to foster discussion among the participants organized in the following groups:

·         EU and Foreign Politics,

·         Domestic Politics and Political Parties,

·         Culture, Literature and Media,

·         Migration,

·         Economics,

·         Law,

·         Religion,

·         History of the Republic,

·         Civil Society and Minorities.

An additional discussion group with well-known representatives from academic and political circles will discuss job perspectives of young researchers working on Turkey.

Call for Papers – Publication

The workshop will be accompanied by the publication of the “Young Researchers` Annual Journal of Turkish Studies in Germany”. It aims at showing the variety of Turkish Studies and presenting new, interdisciplinary approaches to the topic. The editors of the publication are renowned representatives concerned with Turkish Studies from a range of disciplines and will select among the sent-in abstracts.

If you have any questions regarding the workshop or the publication please do not hesitate to visit http://www.netzwerk-tuerkei.org/veranstaltungen/language/en/ or to contact us under WorkshopHamburg@hotmail.com.

11th GSA Conference 2012

Globalizing cultures and identities: Sport, lifestyle, heritage

Date: July 5th–7th 2012

Venue: Manchester Metropolitan University

The conference will be held at Manchester Metropolitan University – where the GSA was first established in 2000 – in conjunction with the Department of Sociology.

The association has invited three keynote speakers who have an internationally recognized expertise in fields relating to our main theme. All have agreed to come. These are as follows:

• Professor Richard Giulianotti, The University of Loughborough
• Professor David Inglis, The University of Aberdeen
• Professor Sharon MacDonald, The University of Manchester

We are also organizing panels led by other leading scholars in this area.

We invite scholars, postgraduates and other interested lay-persons to submit abstracts by March 31st 2012 at the latest. We are approaching a publisher with a view to producing at least one reader incorporating the most interesting papers from the conference.

Outline of themes.
Recent research and theory have expanded our understanding of global practices that increasingly shape the way we conduct our lives, construct our identities and affiliations and pursue our hopes and aspirations. Nowhere is this more evident than in the fields of leisure and the construction of our everyday personas and lifestyles. Here, innumerable fragments of other people’s cultures flow into our lives through the Internet, films, music, art genres, travel and holidays, health and sport practices, heritage experiences, TV, magazines and newspapers, advertising, branding and consumerism, fashion, foods and gastronomic repertoires – among others. Sometimes they empower individuals to seek other worlds and identities. At others, they generate resources with which to construct our preferred life biographies or alter communities. The possibilities not just for personal but also for social transformation resulting from these experiences are endless. Through globalizing cultures, too, some find ways to break free from their original embeddedness within particular ethnic/national boundaries and form global allegiances and lifestyles for which there is no precedent.
In contrast, the circumstances that engender indifference and/or resistance to globalizing cultures are equally valid as themes. Thus, we also welcome papers that explore the limits to, and possibilities for, developing a global consciousness or varieties of cosmopolitanism as outcomes of global cultural and lifestyle experiences and/or which critique concepts in this field. Although the primary emphasis here is on cultural experiences linked to the construction of leisure and lifestyles, we also welcome papers which explore how exposure to globalizing work, religious or political practices are changing people’s identities.

Possible directions and themes: guidelines

• The migration and /or cross fertilization of sport practices, institutions and celebrities across cultural and national boundaries and their wider socio-cultural impact.
• The diffusion, role and take-up of globalizing health practices and the mechanisms through which this occurs;
• How different kinds of skilled transnational migrants – working in the arts, film, TV, theatre, popular entertainment and music etc – are influenced by and in turn shape the dominant cultural, political and other forms evident in the host society;
• How poor economic migrants, who retain strong ties to their societies and cultures of birth, nevertheless forge multiple identities through engagements with migrants from societies different from their own or with members of the host society via participation in leisure activities and lifestyle activities;
• The borrowing, mixing and/or hybridization of genres, styles or practices across ethnic/national borders in any field of the arts, film, music, literature, theatre, dance etc – and the origins, vehicles and outcomes of such cultural mobilities;
• Becoming or being cosmopolitan through engaging in globalizing leisure or lifestyle practices;
• The significance of the heritage and tourism industries as ways of encountering the cultural other and of exploring and substantiating past and current identities;
• Global or globalizing lifestyles and identities and their possible links to the expression of varying forms of political protest.

Please send your abstracts to Paul Kennedy: p.kennedy[at]mmu.ac.uk by March 31st 2012.

The conference will feature a number of panels which will address the conference themes:

 Cricket and Globalization — feat. Dominic Malcolm, Amit Gupta, Chris Rumford, John Horne, Russell Holden, Tom Fletcher (co-organized by the British Sociological Association)

 Cosmopolitanism — feat. Maria Rovisco, Nick Stevenson, Myria Georgiou

 Special panel convened by the ‘Changing Turkey in a Changing World’

The panel will comprise:  Erkan Saka, Akca Atac, Müge Kınacıoğlu, Chris Rumford (discussant).

The conference webpage is now up-and-running and registration will open shortly.

http://www.globalstudiesassociation.org/11th-gsa-conference-2012/

LSE Contemporary Turkish Studies Research Seminar

“Economic Liberalisation, Class Dynamics and New Business Groups in Turkey”

Speaker: Dr. Gul Berna Ozcan

Chair: Professor Sevket Pamuk

Date: MONDAY, 5 DECEMBER 2011

Time: 18.00-19:45

Venue: COW1.11, First Floor, Cowdray House, LSE

Abstract

The growth of new capitalist classes transformed social stratification, multi-party politics and the international political orientation of Turkey since the 1980s.  New business groups energized by Islam have facilitated much needed class mobility. In this process, there also emerged a confrontational split in middle class positions between Islamic versus secular political outlooks. These new middle classes are engaged in promoting Islam as a strategic resource in the class politics and seek protection from the negative effects of market capitalism. More dramatically, these groups redefined the allocation of markets and the distribution of assets while they expanded opportunities for their affiliated groups at home and in foreign markets.  However, the paradox between modernity and authenticity remains unresolved for Turkey’s old middle classes and the new pious elite alike.  Turkey’s changing domestic and international standing is moving towards multiple identity formations.  Although new Islamic leaning business groups have become the winners of the new regime, they have increasingly lost their cutting edge idealism and originality. They are being “normalized” as the new establishment.
Gul Berna Ozcan is Reader in International Business and Entrepreneurship at the School of Management Royal Holloway, University of London. She earned her PhD in Economic Geography from LSE.  She has also been teaching for the Gurukul Global Leadership Programme at LSE (since 2005).  Dr. Ozcan is the author of several books and numerous articles on enterprise development in post-Soviet Central Asia, the political economy of Turkey, local economic development and small and medium-sized enterprises, capital formations, entrepreneurship, and morality and business.

This event is free and open to all with no ticket required. Those who might be interested are all welcome.

Network Turkey/ Netzwerk Tuerkei, an Academic Community for Turkish Studies and a partner of Changing Turkey in a Changing World has recently published Discussion Paper No. 8 entitled ‘The new Turkey: a model for reform in Arab countries?’ by Ludwig Schulz.

Click below for the full paper:

Ludwig Schulz: The new Turkey: a model for reform in Arab countries? Network Turkey Discussion Paper No. 8, Munich 2011. (in German)

Abstract

In the wake of the political uprisings and transformations in Arab countries, hardly any other country has been cited as an archetype or model as often as Turkey. Most of the time, emphasis is placed on the common Islamic culture shared with Turkey, with the country’s democratization seen as another important factor. In this regard, Turkey is taken as an example to verify the compatibility of Islam and democracy and it represents a model which the Arab countries wish to emulate. Likewise, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is perceived as an archetype for the democracy oriented, “moderate” Islamists in the Arab reform countries. However, the question should be raised, whether combining reality reduction and democratic wishful thinking helps in understanding the complex relationships in the region. Rather, Turkey’s special historical developments must be taken into consideration, which leads to the conclusion that it cannot serve as a model, but as a benchmark and a source of inspiration for others – provided that Turkey consequently continues its way to modernization and democratization.